GOP race nears tipping point

The Republican primary is transitioning from hard-fought campaign to its next stage, a reckoning that Mitt Romney will be the nominee.

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have also moved to their next act: hecklers, rather than competitors, with little money to even air cable-TV ads, increasingly far-fetched scenarios for going to Tampa and shrill rhetoric.

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With a mix of resignation about Romney and eagerness to get on with the business of defeating President Barack Obama, conservative and establishment GOP officials are going beyond their time-will-tell talking points to all but declare the race over.

“After a long and grueling primary, it is clear that Mitt Romney is the best candidate to face President Obama and fix the mess of his one and only term,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is set to endorse Romney on Monday and call on Republicans “to unite and work together” to take back the White House.

Still, Gingrich and Santorum appear intent on trudging forward — and the former Pennsylvania senator’s thumping win in Louisiana on Saturday offers him a fresh rationale. But increasingly, the Republican clash is less like the 2008 Obama-Hillary Clinton epic and more reminiscent of the Democrats’ 1992 nomination battle. It was clear in April of that year that Bill Clinton was going to be his party’s nominee, but Jerry Brown refused to drop out even as the Arkansas governor amassed a massive delegate advantage. Like Romney, Clinton had outspoken critics in the party, such as
t
hen-Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, who reinforced Brown’s hopes of an open convention.

Because of the proportional distribution of delegates in the contests so far and Romney’s persistent weakness in heavily evangelical states, the GOP front-runner does not yet have the sort of lead that Clinton enjoyed. But with three Midwestern victories — in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois — and a favorable slate of states coming in April, Romney is on the verge of removing any doubt that he’ll be his party’s standard-bearer.

With his convincing victory last week in Illinois, the former Massachusetts governor garnered a coveted endorsement from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and favorable comments from conservative Sens. Jim DeMint and Pat Toomey. Other high-profile Republicans, sources tell POLITICO, will speak out if Romney captures Wisconsin on April 3.

But that could merely be an exclamation point. There has been a palpable movement in the past week toward viewing Romney’s nomination as a fait accompli — even among confirmed skeptics.

“I think the primary is over,” said unaligned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Romney will be the nominee. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. But she’s warming up.”

“Unless something unusual happens, unless Romney steps on a land mine, he looks like he’s going to be the nominee,” said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who voted for Gingrich in the Magnolia State’s primary.

Barbour, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” predicted that the GOP contest “will wind down” at a “natural pace.”

Romney backers, long past ready to bring down the curtain on a primary that has taken a toll on their candidate’s war chest and favorable ratings, are less charitable about the process their intra party rivals are going through now.

“When you cycle up to the front-runner position for a few days it acts like steroids on the ego,” former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a leading Romney surrogate, told POLITICO. “It takes a long time for the steroids to wind out of system. They’re going through a transition period of detox and the stuff has to work its way out of their system. How long it takes is a function of the size of the ego of the loser. It’s not more complicated than that.”

But if Santorum and Gingrich are coming to terms with their likely defeat, they’re doing so grudgingly and in a way that continues to inflict damage on the front-runner.

The episode last week in which each wielded Etch-a-Sketch toys to mock a Romney aide’s comment about resetting for the general election reinforced a sense of their desperation and revived questions about the establishment favorite’s convictions.

With no path to reach 1,144 delegates by the end of the primary season in June, both Santorum and Gingrich are pinning their hopes on a convention fight. But there is little appetite in the party for such a public blood-spilling just two months before Election Day. That’s in no small part why figures like Jeb Bush, McCarthy, Toomey, DeMint and tea party-aligned freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) have moved in Romney’s direction since Illinois.